And then he heard the last quick words, “I’ll match him for the ale!” and started on his lines. It was not that he said so ill what little he had to say, but that his voice was homelike and familiar in its sound, one of their own, with no amazing London accent to the words—just the speech of every-day, the sort that they all knew. First, some one in the yard laughed out—a shock-headed ironmonger’s apprentice, “Whoy, bullies, there be hayseed in his hair. ’Tis took off pasture over-soon. I fecks! they’ve plucked him green!” There was a hoarse, exasperating laugh. Nick hesitated in his lines. The player at his back tried to prompt him, but only made the matter worse, and behind the green curtain at the door a hand went “clap” upon a dagger-hilt. The play lagged, and the crowd began to jeer. Nick’s heart was full of fear and of angry shame that he had dared to try. Then all at once there came a brief pause, in which he vaguely realized that no one spoke. The man behind him thrust him forward, and whispering wrathfully, “Quick, quick—sing up, thou little fool!” stepped back and left him there alone. [Illustration: “NICK THOUGHT OF HIS MOTHER’S SINGING ON A SUMMER’S EVENING—DREW A DEEP BREATH AND BEGAN TO SING.”] A viol overhead took up the time, the gittern struck a few sharp notes. This unexpected music stopped the noise, and all was still. Nick thought of his mother’s voice singing on a summer’s evening among the hollyhocks, and as the viol’s droning died away he drew a deep breath and began to sing the words of “Heywood’s newest song”: “Pack, clouds, away, and welcome, day; With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, To give my love good-morrow!” It was only a part of a madrigal, the air to which they had fitted the words,—the same air that Nick had sung in the woods,—a thing scarce meant ever to be sung alone, a simple strain, a few plain notes, and at the close one brief, queer, warbling trill like a bird’s wild song, that rose and fell and rose again like a silver ripple. The instruments were still; the fresh young voice came out alone, and it was done so soon that Nick hardly knew that he had sung at all. For a moment no one seemed to breathe. Then there was a very great noise, and all the court seemed hurling at him. A man upon the stage sprang to his feet. What they were going to do to him Nick did not know. He gave a frightened cry, and ran past the green curtain, through the open door, and into the master-player’s excited arms.